


More than a Match for Heaven

by mistleto3



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Black Vow AU, Black Vow Alluring Secret, Character Death, MikoTotsu Week 2017, Multi, Sad Ending, brief mention of sex, cw: depression, cw: suicidal ideation, fallen angel AU, gender swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:54:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistleto3/pseuds/mistleto3
Summary: A stray fallen angel came across a boy with beautiful eyes. At the moment their eyes met, the pathetic angel fell for him.Mikototsu Alluring Secret Black Vow (Fallen Angel) AU.





	More than a Match for Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> For Mikototsu Week 2017, day 9: Alternate Universe. 
> 
> Based on the song [~Alluring Secret~ Black Vow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHtB1o7Lxg) by Hitoshizuku-P.
> 
> This fic can also be found on [Tumblr.](http://mistleto-3.tumblr.com/post/168659270699/more-than-a-match-for-heaven)

Mikoto had seen a lot of angels in his time. But this one was different – this was the first person he’d looked at and thought: _an angel._ A human boy, slight and delicate looking, as though a strong gust of wind would knock his feet out from under him, but it wasn’t that that took Mikoto aback. The boy’s dark gold hair fell just shy of his collar, framing the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Faintly tanned skin, with cheeks flushed pink from the late autumn chill, but even as the biting wind whistled through the bare branches, it didn’t dampen the warm, genuine smile on his lips. And his eyes – the smile came more from his eyes than his lips, a fan of long lashes lining light brown irises, like liquid bronze. Out of all the angels Mikoto had seen before, he had never seen eyes like that.

The boy stopped at the sight of Mikoto at the side of the street, in clothes far too thin to keep the cold at bay.

“Aren’t you chilly?

Mikoto shrugged. “Nothin’ I can do about it.”

The boy removed his scarf and wrapped it around Mikoto’s neck. “I’m Totsuka Tatara, what’s your name?”

“Suoh Mikoto.”

“You should come with me in from the cold,” he said, offering a hand to help Mikoto to his feet.

“How do I know you aren’t a murderer?” Mikoto asked light-heartedly – it was a stupid question. There was no way a boy like this would ever hurt a fly.

“All I can do is promise I want to help you.”

“Why?”

“You seem like someone who doesn’t deserve to be out in the cold on a night like this,” he said simply.

So Mikoto took his hand.

 

Tatara’s house was modest, but cosy. The first thing he did was hurry straight from the front door over to the fireplace to light it, and Mikoto hadn’t realised how cold he had been until the heat seeped into his skin, thawing him out.  Immediately, Tatara directed Mikoto to a seat right in front of the hearth, where he brought him warm clothes and food and drink at a pace that left him bemused. It was a foreign feeling, being offered help like this, and it was difficult not to feel like he owed this boy something in return. Not that he had anything to give him. Except perhaps the truth.  

“If you’re gonna take me in, there’s something you should probably know…” Mikoto began.

Tatara quirked his head, seeming not in the least bit suspicious. “What is it?”

Mikoto set the food and drink on the side, then got to his feet, shrugging off the shirt he’d been given. He thought he saw Tatara’s cheeks flush faintly at the sight of his bare chest, but he brushed it off as a mere trick of the light. Then Mikoto opened his wings behind his back, the immense limbs appearing as though from thin air and stretching almost from one side of the room to the other, clad in iridescent black feathers, like a crow’s.

Tatara didn’t even look surprised. He simply smiled that same sunshine-y smile, and said: “You’re an angel?”

“I s’pose.”

“I knew there was something special about you. But…” His face fell.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you in heaven?”

“I fell.”

Tatara seemed to understand that he didn’t want to elaborate, and he didn’t press the subject. “They’re beautiful…” he said, reaching out almost instinctively to touch the plumage, but he stopped himself, hesitating and glancing at Mikoto as though to ask permission. Mikoto inclined his head slightly, and Tatara ran his fingers over the soft, downy feathers on the underside of his wing. The contact sent tingles of static through every nerve in Mikoto’s body. But it was the pure joy in Tatara’s smile that had the greatest effect on him – the look on his face made parts of Mikoto’s chest he didn’t know could feel anything feel… warm.

_I think I’m in love with him._

Over the next few days, the two of them talked and got to know each other, or rather, Tatara talked and Mikoto listened.

“Do you live alone?” Mikoto asked.

“Not technically – this is my father’s house, but he’s out of town a lot for work. I don’t expect him to be back for a while; he’s away on some business engagement.” Tatara’s tone as he spoke suggested that wasn’t quite the whole truth.

Mikoto raised an eyebrow.

“He tends to get… invited away by the wind sometimes, and I never really know when he’ll get back. He goes away for one thing, and then he’ll get distracted by his vices and spend too much on drink and women and gambling. But it’s no big deal; we get by.” Despite the admission, Tatara didn’t seem perturbed by his father’s behaviour.

“Mhm…”

“Besides, it won’t be like this for much longer anyway…” This time he did sound a little off.

“Why not?”

“I’ll move out when I get married.”

Mikoto felt his stomach drop like a stone. “Is that soon?”

“Fairly… My father arranged the match, the daughter of a business partner of his. My father calls her the Colourless King – he’s always coming up with nonsense nicknames for people; her family name is ‘King,’ and she has hair so pale it’s almost white, and really light coloured eyes too. I haven’t met with her more than a few times – I know the church we’re supposed to marry in, St Mary’s, better than I know her. But she seems nice.” The final phrase was noncommittal – Tatara sounded like he was merely being polite about a stranger.

A small, guilty part of Mikoto was relieved Tatara wasn’t already in love with someone else, but the prospect of him getting married twisted like a blade. It was foolish of him to feel this strongly about a boy he barely knew.

“And you want to get married?”

“I’m not opposed, if it will make my father happy. I’m a bit of a romantic, and I’d prefer to fall in love first, but I’ll make it work. It’ll all turn out okay...” Tatara trailed off, then changed the subject. “What about you, do you have a sweetheart?”

Mikoto shook his head. “Angels aren’t allowed to fall in love.”

Tatara pouted. “That sounds boring…”

Mikoto chuckled. “Yeah, kinda.”

As they conversed, the peace that grew between them seemed almost eerily natural, as easy as breathing. They seemed to click, and despite barely knowing each other, and being such different people, they got along as though they’d known each other their entire lives. The silences were never uncomfortable, and Tatara had an uncanny way of picking all of the meaning out of even the shortest of Mikoto's utterances. They seemed to resonate at the same frequency, like their souls were created from the same substance. It was so painfully impossible to resist falling for this boy, knowing their stars were crossed. Not that Mikoto wanted to fall into a hopeless love, but he'd never been good at self-restraint, and he'd already fallen once - how much more harm could it do to fall again? That brilliant smile was more than a match for heaven - Mikoto had already seen paradise and thought the ache of being tossed out of it would never subside, and yet so quickly he had found heaven in the music of this man's smile, and the sunlight in his laughter. He was worth the ashes of any hope Mikoto might have had of returning to heaven; Mikoto could feel it in his bones. There was something about him that just made Mikoto... certain, more certain than he'd ever been about anything before. It seemed unjust that forbidden fruit could look so tempting, and every day that passed, it was harder to resist reaching for a taste.

 

And so he did just that. Perhaps a week or so had passed since he and Tatara had first met, Mikoto once again found himself enraptured by the shape of his lips, and the sweetness of every word that flowed from them. He was almost addictive; the calm that came with his mere presence was like a drug. Mikoto almost didn't recognise himself under the spell of this boy. He had never been one to form attachments to people, never been one to care what others thought, but it was like Tatara was reeling him in, coaxing down his guard with the sense of security he instilled in Mikoto. It was uncanny and terrifying and wonderful and Mikoto was finding it difficult to quiet the intrusive thoughts about what those delicate fingers would feel like tangled with his own.

They were walking together, just walking, with Tatara laughing melodically at something Mikoto had just said as Mikoto followed him into the kitchen, lagging only a few paces behind. And then suddenly he found himself reaching for Tatara's arm, wrapping his hand all the way around the slender limb. The warmth of his touch and the soft innocence in Tatara's gasp of surprise only urged him on. Mikoto felt like his body was moving of its own accord, turning the beautiful man in his arms to face him and pressing a soft, chaste kiss to those irresistible lips, those lips that tasted like recklessness and paradise.

For an exultant moment, Tatara yielded to the kiss, seeming to sink into it, and Mikoto decided _fuck heaven,_ because he could find all the heaven he needed right here, in this.

But then Tatara seemed to freeze, and Mikoto pulled away immediately at the sense that something wasn't right. For the first time in over a week, Tatara didn't seem to have anything to say. He stammered, and a crease appeared between his brows as conflict flickered across his expression.

“I-I’m sorry…” he said finally.

“No, I am…” Mikoto replied. He kicked himself internally for even considering that it might have been a good idea – Tatara was engaged, and there was every chance he wasn’t even interested in men, wasn’t interested in Mikoto.

“N-no…” Tatara’s expression softened immediately at the guilt on Mikoto’s face. “It’s not that I didn’t want it; I’ve never… Nobody has ever made me feel grounded the way you have before, and I wish we could…” He took Mikoto’s hands in his own and took a deep breath, as though trying to gather his thoughts.

“I get it. You’re engaged.”

“It isn’t that. I barely know her; I feel no obligation to her.”

“Then what?”

“You said it was forbidden for an angel to fall in love. I don’t pretend to be a man of faith and know that much about it, but I’m pretty sure the punishment for a sin like that is an eternity in hell, especially if you’ve already been kicked out of heaven.”

Mikoto’s instinct was to tell him it was worth it, but he bit his tongue, feeling it would be inappropriate.

“Besides, even if there were no consequences for you, there’s still my father. He would never understand if I fell in love with a man. It would be easier to explain to him that you were an angel…” Tatara obviously saw the flicker of anger cross Mikoto’s face at the insinuation that Tatara’s father might take issue to his son’s identity, and Tatara quickly rectified his statement. “Not that he’s closed-minded or intolerant or hateful or anything of that sort; he would never hurt me for liking a man, but… he gets disappointed easily, and he’s had this idea of how I was going to be all my life, and that idea revolves around me carrying on the family name. Obviously I can’t do that if I can’t have any children, and I can’t have children if I’m with a man.”

“Why do you care so much about what he thinks if he treats you badly?”

“It’s… hard to explain. It’s easier to think of him as a bad friend than a father, but I know he doesn’t do it out of malice. He just doesn’t really have any direction in life after my mother left, and I know how it feels to be drifting without anything to really cling to. I feel like I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s family.”

“That’s more important than being happy?”

“I don’t know what he would do if he found out – like I said: he’s easily disappointed, and if he’s been drinking or something he could overreact and I could lose everything and end up on the streets.”

Mikoto sighed. That reason, at least, he could understand. If it came to that, it wasn’t like he could provide for Tatara, and he couldn’t ask him to risk everything for his sake.

“I understand.”

“I’m sorry…” Tatara began, squeezing Mikoto’s hands. His voice faltered, as though he was trying to bite back tears.

“It’s not your fault,” Mikoto murmured, pulling him into his arms. “But I can’t stay.” As he said it, he realised it was true – he couldn’t linger knowing Tatara felt the same way, but he could never have him. It would be torture, falling from heaven all over again. He would miss the warmth of him, the boy made of sunlight.

Tatara sniffled, but he nodded, his face buried in Mikoto’s chest. “I understand.” His voice was thick with tears.

“Thank you for everything.”

“It was a joy.”

They drew out the moments standing in each other’s embrace until long after the tears on Tatara’s cheeks had dried, and then finally, they untangled themselves from each other.

“Don’t worry. Everything will turn out okay,” Tatara said softly, but it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. “I’m glad I met you.”

“Me too,” Mikoto said, then unfolded his wings in preparation to leave, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, if he dragged out their goodbye any longer, he would never be able to make himself go.

Tatara ran his hands across the wings one final time, and Mikoto felt his fingers rustle a loose feather. Mikoto reached over to where he’d felt it and eased the long flight feather out, then pressed it into Tatara’s hand, and Tatara gave him a weak smile in response. Then he tiptoed to wrap his arms around Mikoto’s neck and press their lips softly together one final time. After a drawn out moment, they broke apart, and wordlessly, Mikoto left.

* * *

A month passed, but the ache never lessened. Mikoto’s chest felt like something had been gouged out of it, like some deep, unclosing wound had been savaged inside him, and it only festered and stung more with every passing day. No matter what Mikoto tried to pile on top of the pain, no matter what he did or how many cigarettes he smoked or how much he drank, nothing deadened the throbbing. He almost found himself wishing he could die. Not planning it actively per se, but he sometimes wondered idly how much he would have to drink before it poisoned him, or if it would hurt if he stepped out into the train tracks.

He felt pathetic for thinking this way over someone he had barely known for a week. But it was like he’d spent his entire life sleepwalking; he couldn’t even muster the energy to care terribly when he fell from heaven. He’d felt happiness, but it was always meek and transient, like the weak glimmers of sun between the clouds of a grey winter day. And then he’d met Tatara, who had burned so brilliantly that without him, it seemed like the world had fallen into darkness, and now he’d had a taste of what true contentment felt like, of what it meant to really be wanted by someone, to fall back into the bland, lifeless existence he’d had before they met felt like torture.

He’d never thought much about the dark arts before. But he supposed there was nothing to lose now. At first it had just been a passing inkling, and then a thought, and then a plan, and then a _need,_ a need to do something, anything, to make the pain go away.

So he stood before a mirror, took a blade to his palm, and painted the circle on the glass. And then, a whispered incantation was all it took, in a language Mikoto didn’t quite understand. When he opened his eyes, the image in the mirror was not his reflection, but a shadowy figure.

“What is it you would have me do?”

“How much would it cost to be with him?”

“Love between a human and an angel is forbidden,” the spectre said, its tone almost teasing.

“So make me human. You can do that?”

“I can, I can. How long for? The rest of his life?”

“Yes. How much would it cost?” he repeated.

The demon considered for a moment. “One wing.”

“Take it.”

A hand, like congealed smoke, reached out through the glass and grasped Mikoto’s own bloody fingers and shook them, then retracted, dissipating into the air with the smell of something charring.

And then Mikoto felt as though he was falling, like the ground had disappeared out from beneath his feet, and agony erupted between his shoulder blades as his wing was torn from his body, blood pulsing down his back as the bones broke and sinew tore. It almost, almost, hurt as much as losing the only love he’d ever known.

* * *

 

Tatara had taken to walking the churchyard a lot, wandering between the marble seraphs guarding the graves and trying not to be too forlorn, but as much as he told himself it would all turn out okay, it rang hollow. The thought of the fast approaching wedding filled him with a cold, constricting anxiety, and he felt like there was a… space in his chest, like his ribcage had been deflated and sunken in on himself. So he tried to keep his mind off it. It was easier to cope with the pain when he wasn’t thinking about it.

Before, he’d been okay with the wedding – he’d figured, well, these are things that happen, and he might as well make the best of it. But the truce he’d reached with the concept had been shaken irreparably by his meeting with the angel. He could barely even think about Mikoto – he tried to bury the thoughts, in fear they’d strike him off guard and he would crumble into tears. He hadn’t cried over him yet, not since he’d left. The whole week they’d spent together felt like a vivid fever dream; it almost seemed too intense to be real. Tatara almost would have thought he’d made the whole thing up if it weren’t for the feather he kept under his pillow, and the constant hollow aching between his ribs.

The church wasn’t busy between sermons, and apart from the occasional mourner, who Tatara always kept a respectful distance from, the churchyard was usually empty whenever he went for walks there. He wasn’t really religious, so he wasn’t sure what drew him to that spot, except that he didn’t want to be at home with his father, and this was the only place he could think of to go, even when it rained or when the grass was blanketed in snow.

Except one day, Tatara found he wasn’t alone in the grounds – he was joined by a woman standing in the shade of an apple tree with long, waist length hair, such a vivid and dark auburn that it was almost blood red. She was tall and almost intimidating, but beautiful in a fierce and leonine way. Even her almond shaped eyes were dark yellow, like a cat’s. But they weren’t predatory, if anything, they were almost mournful. But she wasn’t dressed funeralgoer’s black, and there were no burials that Tatara knew of arranged for that day.

And then she caught his gaze and started heading towards him, and Tatara felt a twinge of embarrassment; he hadn’t realised until it was too late that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her in a while, and she had noticed him staring. There was just something captivating about her appearance, like recognising a face but not being able to put your finger on where you remember it from.

As the girl approached, Tatara bowed his head apologetically. “I’m sorry for staring… I didn’t even realise, I apologise if I made you uncomfortable. But if you don’t mind me saying, you’re very pretty.” He looked up at her and offered her a sheepish smile, and to his relief, the corner of the girl’s lip was quirked in a smirk.

“You too.”

“My name’s Totsuka Tatara, what’s yours?”

She paused for a fraction of a second, and Tatara worried he’d been too forward, until she said: “Makoto.”

“What a beautiful name.”

Their eyes met for a moment, and it was like opium. That little wry smile almost seemed to smooth over the pain of the past month, like footprints in the sand washed away by the waves. For the first time in weeks, Tatara forgot about it all; his mantra that everything would all turn out okay finally seemed to hold a glimmer of truth.

He never used to believe in love at first sight, and yet here he was, suspecting he was beginning to fall for the second time.

“What’re you doing out here?” she asked.

“The grounds are a nice place to go for a walk, to think about things.”

“What things?”

Tatara could feel his own eyes creasing at the corners into the same mournful expression mirrored in hers. “I’m supposed to come here in a while to do something, but I’m not sure I want to.”

“Can you get out of it?”

“Not really. Not unless I run away…” he said, half-joking.

“Then why not?”

Tatara paused for a moment. The thought quickly took root within him, almost like a weed, and as absurd as it sounded, as reckless as it would be, it was tempting. The idea was almost seductive, sweeter every moment he mulled over it.

_Why not?_

It wasn't like he had anything to cling to in this place - his father was never around, and when he was, all Tatara could think at the sight of his face was everything he might have cost him. He held no resentment towards him, but equally, he no longer had the same urgency not to disappoint him. He simply didn't have the energy to care anymore.

_Why not?_

It was awfully rash, and quite frankly dangerous, to run away at the suggestion of some strange, siren-like woman, but the things she said were the only things that had made sense to him in months, the only things that struck a chord.

He didn't want to get married to his betrothed, that much he was certain of. It was too permanent and too limiting; the prospect of a ring seemed more like a shackle. And now he'd had this brief and breath taking whirlwind romance, and the prospect of settling down seemed almost like numbing himself, and as much as the pain of everything that had happened was crushing him, he decided it was better to hurt for a little while than be numb forever.

_Why not..._

"I suppose... there's nothing really holding me here... There's my father, but...” _I don’t care anymore_ was the genuine continuation to the rest of the sentence, but he couldn’t make himself say it out loud. “But where would we stay?" He wasn't quite sure what possessed him to assume this strange woman would be coming with him, but she didn't object.

"Hotel, I guess."

"Where would we go?"

"Anywhere."

That did sound appealing. To just climb on a train and follow it wherever it went. It was tantalising, thrilling. To flee, to shed the weight of his worries and liberate himself from the anxiety that was congealing into a weight inside his chest. He only wished he'd thought of this sooner, but he wasn't sure he would have had the courage to do this even a few weeks ago. It was only now he didn't really feel like he had anything to lose that he couldn't shake the grip of the wanderlust. He had been existing okay before the angel showed up, but when he disappeared, it felt like he took a piece of Tatara with him, like after seeing in brilliant technicolour for a few days, he realised how monotonous his life really was, how little he had to cling onto. His father had called him cold-hearted because of how uninterested in anything he was, and Tatara sort of agreed with him.

Tatara smiled. “Why not?” he concurred, offering out his hand, and the girl took it.

 

Once they’d decided, Tatara moved quickly so he wouldn’t lose his resolve. He returned for a short while to his home to pack some things and leave a note for his father. It was only brief:

_I can’t go through with the wedding. I’m sorry, but I need to get away from this place and find something to cling on to that I truly care about. I can’t be cold-hearted anymore._

_Love Tatara._

He left it on the table, then gathered some clothes and money and a few other essential things, and placed the feather at the bottom of his bag.

An hour later, they were on the train. They didn’t go far, just a few cities over, but Tatara already felt reinvigorated. On the train, they talked, getting to know each other. The girl was just as enigmatic as she had been when Tatara had met her that morning – she didn’t seem to have much to say about herself, except that she’d been kicked out of her home by her father for being sinful and unrepentant.

“What sin, if I may ask?”

“Fell in love with someone I shouldn’t have.”

“That doesn’t sound like a sin.”

“’S what I did about it.”

“O-oh…” Tatara felt his cheeks flush at the lewd hint, and he tried to suppress the wave of indecent thoughts. “Are you still with the person?”

“No.”

Tatara almost felt relieved, and he didn’t know why.

As quiet as this girl was, she was easy to talk to. It was almost as it had been with the angel; they seemed to be on the same wavelength. He couldn’t blame her for being quiet, though; he understood why she didn’t seem eager to talk much about herself, and he related to the urge to discard everything that tied her to her past and look forward. Tatara recognised the mournful look she still had in her eyes – that was the look of someone whose memories were mostly painful, but she seemed to have brightened a little now they’d taken this leap together.

Tatara only wished he could have taken it sooner and fled with his angel, but there was no point lamenting over could-have-beens. He too wanted to cut ties with history and make himself anew, away from the things that had held him back in the past. And this time he wasn’t going to waste another opportunity to love – the whole time they’d been on the train, his fingers were twined with the girl’s, and the warmth of her hand imbued him with strength. He felt like he had known her all his life, and he got this intangible feeling about her like he was meant to meet her, like she would be the turning point in his life, she would be indescribably important. Like she could even be the thing he wanted to cling to.

They found the first inn they came across when they got off the train, but as Tatara approached the reception, he hesitated.

“What?” Makoto asked.

“I don’t really have the money for two rooms…”

“I don’t mind sharing.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, and Tatara stepped forward to speak to the woman behind the front desk.

Once they had been shown up to their room, the evening was beginning to wear on. Tatara allowed Makoto to bathe first, and then took a bath himself. It almost felt like the act of it washed away his old life, but he was surprised to find he didn’t really feel sentimental about it.

Once Tatara was clean and dry, he emerged from the bathroom to find Makoto lying on the bed reading a book in nothing but her underwear, her hair still slightly damp and fanning out around her head on the sheets like a fiery halo.

“S-sorry, I didn’t realise you weren’t decent yet, I should have knocked before I came out…” he stammered.

“It’s okay. I don’t have pyjamas or a night gown or anything like that.”

“I’m sure something of mine would fit you if you need something.”

“Nah. I’d just be too warm. Unless there’s an issue…”

“N-not at all!” Tatara blurted out, trying to keep his eyes averted from her body, but it was extraordinarily difficult. She was stunningly beautiful, shapely and elegant, but not soft like most women; he could see the shadow of her abdominal muscles on her tummy, and her arms and thighs looked powerful enough to just about crush him. As much as he felt like he’d known her for years, or like they’d been soulmates in some past life, he was acutely aware that she was essentially a stranger, and he felt rude for being so aware of her body.

“You don’t have to avert your eyes like some puritan,” she said, her tone slightly mocking but in a gentle way. She closed the book and set it on the bedside table.

“It would be improper…” he began, but if he was completely honest, her beauty made him nervous. It was almost frightening how much he wanted her, the magnetism he felt drawing him towards her, body and soul. “We barely know each other…”

“But you ran away with me. Isn’t that more improper?” She sat up as she spoke.

“I suppose…” Tatara sat down beside her on the mattress, and she rested her hand on top of his. “I just feel like… it’s hard to explain. Like you aren’t a stranger, like I was meant to meet you. I feel like everything makes sense now that I know you.”

Makoto nodded in understanding.

“Do you feel the same way?”

She nodded, and then the next thing Tatara knew, they were kissing, their arms around each other’s waists, clinging to one another like a lifeline. He felt like he was coming up for air as they tumbled back onto the mattress together, and the last of his inhibitions evaporated. He _craved_ her, craved to know her as well as he already felt he did. He wanted to see her face without that mourning look in her eyes.

So he gave himself to her, surrendering as she crawled on top of him and their kisses burned with desire that neither of them wanted to reign in. Her body under his hands felt like paradise, her kisses like liberation, and suddenly he was resolved to replace that melancholy expression with ecstasy. Everything else in the world fell away except the two of them, skin-to-skin, as he held on to her for dear life, worshipping her body, kissing every inch of feverish flesh within reach, roaming downwards and giving no thought to the consequences. She was smirking, and he wanted more of that smile, wanted to coax more of her voice out of her throat, lose himself in her, drown in her. And she seemed to want the same; the movement of her hands was imperative, encouraging, eager. It was the most expressive he’d seen her, and he wanted to keep breaking through the walls she’d built around herself. So he kept going, exploring the contours of her body, peppering kisses in trails down her stomach to taste the heat between her thighs, spurred on by the soft noises in her throat and the way her fingers tangled in his hair…

Tatara lost track of time after that, but by the time they collapsed onto the mattress, spent and exhausted, it was the early hours of the morning, but Tatara didn’t care. The glow on Makoto’s face as she lay beside him, tangled in his arms, was like seeing heaven.

* * *

 

They soon settled in the city they’d drifted to; Tatara found a job as a cook in a pub not far from the hotel they’d stayed their first night at. The landlord was a relaxed, friendly fellow who wore glasses with coloured lenses, and he was kind enough to offer out the unoccupied apartment above the bar for them to rent. Makoto wasn’t much of the housewife type, and found herself bored and restless staying in all day, so she ended up working at the bar as well. Initially, her job was as a bar maid, but it wasn’t exactly her forte and she resented the patrons who got a little too drunk and tried their luck with her. At one point, she’d bodily thrown a man who’d had too much to drink and was getting aggressive out of the establishment with her own two hands, and after that she changed roles to doorwoman, which she liked much better.

The life she and Tatara had built was a modest one, but they were happy – they didn’t have to worry about anyone else but themselves; there were no obligations or expectations or thoughts of the future. Tatara seemed much less listless than he had before, and he spent the time he wasn’t at work experimenting with different hobbies to pass the time – he bought instruments and practiced on them, tried his hand at painting, and all sorts of other things. He finally seemed truly content – when they’d first met and Makoto went by another name, Tatara had seemed cheerful enough on the outside, but she could sense a sort of… discontentment about him, like he wasn’t quite satisfied, or didn’t really know where his place in the world was. But that air of dissatisfaction had vanished since they ran away, and his happiness seemed like more than just a façade now.

Makoto supposed the same was the case for her – looking back, there had never been a phase in her life that she could truly consider happy. Before she’d fallen, she wasn’t sad per se, but she was never really content. And then of course it went without saying that the short time she’d been on earth in her original form hadn’t been happy, with the exception of that first week with Tatara. But now, the little life they’d built together held more happiness than heaven ever had. With the exception of the flicker of guilt that she wasn’t telling Tatara the whole truth. By now, she didn’t know how to tell him they had met before, but she wasn’t sure how much it mattered. It wasn’t as though she was falsifying her personality, and she wasn’t exactly uncomfortable in the body she was in – she had never been particularly connected to masculinity anyway; it hadn’t been something she ever cared deeply about. Tatara seemed happy enough with the way she looked as things stood, and it wasn’t as though she could do anything to change back anyway – it would cost her her other wing, and if she lost them both, that would be the end of her. Besides, she didn’t want Tatara to feel guilty about what she’d done for him; it was more than worth it. If she had remained an angel, their love would continue to be forbidden. There seemed no benefit in the truth, and even though it would bother her from time to time, it wasn’t enough for her to consider telling him. It wasn’t like she had lied, anyway – Tatara had never brought up the mysterious angel he had met not long before her; he seemed to have buried it in an attempt to forget the agony of the encounter. Or perhaps he’d simply convinced himself it had all been a dream. Either way, she didn’t blame him.

As time went on, it became something of a tradition for the two of them to go for walks in the grounds of the local church whenever they needed to get away from the building they spent most of their time in, as a sort of homage to the place they’d ‘first met’. They never went inside the church itself – if Makoto was honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if she did, but they were content out in the yard, wandering between the trees and lichen-covered headstones, as though the earth were growing up to claim not only the person given back to it, but their memorial too.

“I don’t think I’d like to be buried,” Tatara had said one day out of the blue as they walked through the graveyard. “I’d want to be cremated, and I’d want my ashes to be buried with a seed, so I would live again as a tree.”

“What kind of tree?”

“An apple tree.”

It seemed appropriate for Tatara to want to be reborn as the tree that bore fruit so often demonised as the one Eve picked from the tree of knowledge. Makoto’s own personal forbidden fruit.

“What about you?” Tatara asked.

Makoto shrugged. “Never thought about it. Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about stuff like that?”

Tatara smiled. “I suppose I should be more focused on how I’m going to live, right?”

“Mm.”

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, tangling his fingers with Makoto’s. “I want to spend my life with you.”

“Are you proposing?” she joked.

A serene smile crossed Tatara’s face, and he released her hand, bending down to pick a daisy from amongst the grass. With great concentration, he poked a hole through the top of the stem with his fingernail, then curled the bottom around and threaded it through the hole to create a ring. And he knelt down.  

“Even though I haven’t known you very long, the time I’ve spent with you has been the happiest of my life. I’ve never felt as free or as joyful as I do with you; I finally have something in my life that I want to hold onto, something to cherish and love and live for, and I want to do that for the rest of my life.” The words obviously weren’t rehearsed, but they flowed straight from his soul like poetry, without a single stutter or pause. Like this was the only thing he’d ever been sure about. “So I would be honoured and privileged if you would marry me,” he concluded, holding out the flower.

Makoto offered him her hand for him to slide the makeshift ring onto her finger. “Yes,” she said simply.

Tatara leapt to his feet and flung his arms around her, and Makoto thought she felt a teardrop fall from his jaw onto her shoulder. “I love you so much.”

* * *

 

The pair didn’t really get married, as such – they still never entered the church, and the only other person present at their ‘wedding’ was their landlord, Izumo. They bought proper rings, simple and inexpensive, and exchanged them along with their vows beneath an old, gnarled apple tree, its boughs heavy with spring blossoms. Tatara’s were lengthy and poetic, of course, whilst Makoto’s were simple and straight to the point, but in them she expressed emotions she had never spoken aloud – that she had never truly been happy before, but now that she had him, she was honestly content for the first time, and for that, she would give all her life to him. It had been a struggle for her to put it into words, but after several scratched out drafts and a little help from Izumo, she finally ended up with a set of short vows written on a small notecard to read out. At the ‘ceremony’, she looked up from the card at the end of the speech to see tears of joy spilling down Tatara’s cheeks.

Makoto felt at peace as she lay in their marriage bed that night, with Tatara’s head on her shoulder as he dreamed. Even in a body and a name and a gender that weren’t her own, it didn’t really bother her. Here, it felt like all of the pain of her past was just a distant memory, faded and bleached by sunlight and time. It almost felt as though it was all a different lifetime, disconnected from the one she was living now. She remembered that it had happened, but she could no longer recall the way that biting, constant ache had felt. Her life now almost seemed too good, too perfect to be real, like she had dreamed it up to escape the past, but the warm weight of Tatara’s body slotted so perfectly beneath her arm, and the tickle of his breath over her bare collarbone were too wonderful for her to ever have made them up – she wasn’t optimistic enough to ever dream something like this was possible.

With the marriage, Tatara started musing about the future – he talked about it as if he’d been thinking about it for a while, but had been too nervous to say it aloud in fear of scaring her away (as if he could have scared away the person who he ran away with five minutes after meeting her). He started discussing changing jobs, finding something with better pay so they could afford a home of their own. Makoto had never been bothered by any of this stuff – she had always been happy just to do whatever made Tatara happy, so she agreed that if that was what he wanted, then they would do it. And then Tatara paused, shyly, and Makoto prompted him to say whatever it was he was thinking.

“Have you ever… thought about starting a family?”

“No,” she said, truthfully. It had never really occurred to her as something to consider, but now that Tatara brought it up, she supposed that seeing as she was human now, and female, then it would technically be possible. There had always been rules against angels having children, so it had never crossed her mind before now. “Have you?”

“I thought about it before. I always wanted children in theory, I suppose; I love kids, and I wanted to give them all the things my parents never gave me. But then I was betrothed and I stopped thinking about it because I couldn’t really picture a life with my old fiancée. But now I’m married to a woman I really love… Obviously there’s no pressure, but if it’s something you think would be a possibility, even if it would be far, far in the future, then we could think about it…”

“I guess I don’t not want them.” She shrugged. “Never really considered it before.”

Tentative hope lit up Tatara’s face.

“It’s worth thinking about, one day,” she finally concluded, and Tatara squeezed her hand. She could practically see the dreams of their future materialising in his eyes. It was sort of adorable.

They had been walking as they spoke, back to that churchyard. A meteor shower had been forecast, and Tatara was determined to go and watch the shooting stars, so he made a picnic and rolled up a blanket to bring with them and set up in the grounds. When they arrived, there was around an hour or so before the shower itself was supposed to begin, and they laid everything out and settled in together, while Tatara poured them each a glass of wine from the bottle he’d brought along. They picked at the selection of food in comfortable silence. The sky was blessedly clear with the exception of a few small wisps of cloud, and every so often, Tatara would point out the unusual shape of a cloud, or a constellation he had either recognised or entirely made up himself, but apart from that, they simply absorbed the beauty of the evening, cuddled up to one another.

They had just about finished eating when the first light streaked across the sky, and Tatara gasped, laying back to rest his head in Makoto’s lap and watch the display, as Makoto watched the reflection of the glimmering stars in his eyes. She could have drowned in those eyes, in the joy in his expression every time another glittering meteor darted across the constellations. Their fingers twined loosely as they nestled together for warmth in the midnight chill. Makoto didn’t once look up – she was content to watch her lover’s face.

“Isn’t it a nice night out?” Tatara said, the casual understatement just like him.

“A nice night, you say? Indeed it is.” The mirthful voice sounded from behind them, and Tatara sat up with a start, turning to face the speaker.

A woman with white hair and unnervingly gleeful, pale eyes stood a short distance away from them, her face twisted by a grin. Makoto felt Tatara freeze beside her, and immediately recognised the woman from the description Tatara had given all that time ago. The ‘Colourless King’; the fiancée that Tatara had run from.

Makoto tensed, preparing for a fight. There was a sort of crazed, preternatural quality to her smile, an unpredictability in the giddy way she swayed that sent a chill through Makoto’s body. The pallor of the woman’s skin almost glowed in the light of the full moon as though she were a ghost. Makoto opened her mouth to ask the woman how she had found them, but she never got the chance.

The woman’s hand twitched from her pocket, and the cold grey metal of the barrel of a gun glinted in the starlight. The peace of the evening was shattered by the deafening _crack_ of a gunshot, echoing off the buildings nearby.

An expression of mild surprise crossed Tatara’s face as he looked down at the scarlet bloodstain blossoming down the front of his shirt, and then up at Makoto’s face before tumbling back into her arms. She clutched him in disbelief, cradling his limp form as he reached up to cup her cheek with a weak and shaking hand, his skin splattered with blood.

He saw the panic in her eyes and simply smiled at her reassuringly, the same serene smile he’d worn when they were stargazing just a moment ago.

“I was happy…” he told her. He didn’t seem afraid, or even shocked after the first moment of surprise. He barely even seemed to be in pain. He had simply accepted his fate.

“No, Tatara…”

“Don’t worry, it’ll all turn out alright,” his voice was full of conviction, despite how the strength of it wavered. The blood continued to spread across his torso, an impossible amount of it, brilliant crimson even under the moonlight that seemed to bleach everything it touched shades of silver. With every beat of his heart, a fresh pulse of scarlet trickled down his stomach.

“Tatara…”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Tatara, don’t die.”

He smiled at her. “Sorry…” The word escaped on a long exhale, like a sigh of relief, and his hand dropped. The reflection of the stars still glittered across his irises, but the light from within them had faded, like the brief shooting stars they had watched.

The shooter had vanished by the time Makoto could finally lift her head to look up, her eyes stinging and her vision blurred.

_This must be judgement._

But it seemed agonisingly, infuriatingly unfair that Tatara should pay for Makoto’s act of treachery. Surely if anyone should die for her sins, it should be her.

Makoto didn’t recite any incantations this time; the figure simply appeared, a subtle, near-formless shape within the shadows that seemed slightly denser than the rest of the darkness, as though drawn to her pain like a shark to all the blood. It stood beneath the apple tree, now drooping under the weight of unripe fruit, and Makoto could almost sense that it was smiling.

“Remember the vow you made under this tree? ‘I will give all my life to you’?”

Makoto didn’t say anything.

“He’s not gone yet. You can save him.”

“How much would it cost?” Makoto felt she knew the answer before she spoke.

“One wing.”

“Take it.”

The wing immediately unfurled behind her back, and for a brief moment, it felt good to stretch out the limb, kept concealed for so long. And then it was over, and she once again felt the flesh ripping apart, but this time it barely stung more than a mere scratch, dwarfed by the suffocating weight of the lifeless body in her arms.

And then she felt her body shift once more, like fluid moving beneath her skin.

 _For the rest of his life._ The demon had done her this one kindness now that her first contract had come to its conclusion, and Mikoto felt his clothes tear as he resumed his original shape.

The bloodstain across Tatara’s torso shrunk, retracting towards the wound until it disappeared. And then his lashes fluttered, and he sucked in a gasp of air, his eyes wide with shock as he sat bolt upright. He stared at Mikoto in amazement, and his gaze dropped briefly to the ring on his finger as he made the connection. The last thing Mikoto saw was the smile on his face before his vision blurred and he faded out, leaving nothing but a single feather fluttering down to the earth, and the ring Tatara had given him, the symbol of the promises that irrevocably intertwined them.

If to die for him was Mikoto’s fate, he could make peace with that – there was no doubt in his mind that it was better to die in his stead than live without him. And if Tatara was sure it would work out okay, then Mikoto held onto his certainty. In his death, he felt his transgression was paid for and the slate was wiped clean, so when they met again, there would be no reason that they couldn’t be together. And Mikoto had to believe they would meet again someday, because that would be the only possible happy ending.


End file.
